He was called "Beecher” when he was young. Arnold Beecher was born on 29 May 1907 in Oelwein, Iowa. In late March 1909 he moved with his family to 602 South College Avenue, Aledo, Illinois where they lived until 1 Sep 1919. His sister Mary Isabel was born in Aledo on 2 Feb 1911. From 1 Sep 1919 to June 1921 they lived at 1092 North Broad Street, Galesburg, Illinois.165 In June 1921 he moved with his family to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where they lived until his father died in 1928. He attended school through the 11th grade in May, 1926, but did not graduate from Muskogee High School.363 After his father's death in 1928, he lived in 1929-30 and 1930-31 with his widowed mother and sister Elizabeth with sister Mary while she attended Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. They all then spent 3 years at Camp, Dorset, Minnesota during the Depression winters of 1931-2, 1932-3, 1933-4. He married Frances Dobbs in 1937. In 1946 he purchased property across the road from Camp, on Loon Lake, and built a house where they lived during the summer. From 1947 to 1959 the he and his family lived in Pullman, Chicago, Illinois. He worked as a tool and die maker for a firm in Chicago, Illinois, who let him have summers off in Dorset to guide fishermen. In 1964 they lived in Schererville, Indiana. He later worked as a dispatcher in Naperville, Illinois. By 1969 he was retired and living in Dorset permanently, until he died in 1979. The address of his home is now 12971 Grouse Road, Park Rapids, Minnesota 56470.

She graduated from Elmwood, Illinois High School on 17 May 1932.